Page 243 of Triplet Babies for my Ex's Best Friend

He doesn’t make me say it.

I do anyway.

“Megan. Me. Bryce.”

Bryce never had primary oversight on Megan’s aircraft. Not operationally. His role back then was broader systems architecture, simulation modeling, and instability testing.

The kind of access that mattered technically, without placing him anywhere near the final flight investigation afterward.

At the time, that distance felt reassuring.

Now it feels dangerous.

Jeffrey closes his eyes briefly. “And Bryce had already left formal operations.”

“His formal access was supposed to be limited.”

“But legacy credentials?”

I sigh heavily. “Not fully revoked. Because back then we were idiots.”

“You were small.”

“Same thing.”

Strong AeroTech in those days wasn’t the tower it is now. It was three rooms, too many prototypes, too little sleep, and a level of trust that now seems lessloyaltyand morenegligence.

Bryce had been brilliant then.

Erratic, yes. Ambitious. Easily bored. But brilliant.

He understood stabilization architecture intuitively. He could find vulnerabilities in systems before most engineers knew where to look. That skill built part of the company.

That same skill may have created vulnerabilities none of us understood quickly enough.

The possibility settles into me slowly, resisting shape even while the evidence keeps pushing toward it.

“Why?” Jeffrey asks quietly.

I stare at the access logs without answering immediately because that question has lived underneath every other question for four years.

I move to the table where we’ve spread everything into sequence. Current sabotage. Bryce’s patch. The gala argument. Celeste’s statements from the café, relayed by Addy. Old access logs. Megan’s crash data.

“Addy spoke with Celeste.”

“I know. You sent me the summary.”

“She said Bryce believes I stole his life.”

Jeffrey looks up. “That sounds like him.”

I pick up the access log. Remote authentication. Former admin architecture group. Masked location. Four minutes, twelve seconds.

“Eleven hours before Megan’s flight, a legacy admin key accessed the stabilization configuration.”

Jeffrey’s attention sharpens. “You didn’t have that before.”

“I had it. I didn’t understand it.”